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RootsTech 2015

Some people eat, sleep and chew gum, I do genealogy and write...

Wednesday, December 28, 2011

Where do we go from here?

I am one of those who only make the briefest attempts at New Year's resolutions. I mostly am too busy to think about what I intend to do for a whole year, I worry about what I am going to eat for breakfast for two seconds and that is about my level of planning. This is witnessed by the fact that I began this post down in Southern Arizona, where I had no idea I would be yesterday morning. Vague plans have a tendency to crystallize quickly. But rather than resolutions, I do have some general ideas about the work I intend to do in 2012.

First on my list is scanning. I am doing a scanning project now that involves 42 years of records. I estimate 10,000 scans. That will take me about a month to finish. Then I have an endless pile of boxes of more documents to scan. Even with my 40 ppm scanner this will take a long time since I estimate another 50,000 to 100,000 scans. In addition, as I noted in a recent post, I got a lead on another gold mine of family photos that might add as many as ten boxes of additional scanning. The most time consuming part is identifying and adding metadata to the photos. This goes on continually.

Next on my list is teaching and helping at the Mesa Regional Family History Center and at various conferences. Right now, I am scheduled for five conferences, a webinar and another presentation for a genealogy club. I also teach at least two or three classes up to eight a week at the Center and spend some time helping patrons and the other volunteers. I will be a featured Blogger at all of the Conferences and that should be interesting.

I am working on the support team for the FamilySearch Research Wiki and that entails meetings and editing and adding content to the Wiki every week. Some weeks I spend a lot of time on the Wiki, other weeks not so much.

Then, of course, there is writing. I finished my book, The Guide to FamilySearch Online (see the link above) and will have a second book on the FamilySearch Research Wiki finished shortly. I have the Blogs and FamilySearch TechTips that I write for regularly.

I will be out taking photos for 360Cities.net that are mostly all posted to Google Earth. This does take some time but is mostly something I do in between everything else.

I have a continual background of helping people with their genealogy research. This is mostly like the weather, something that goes on continually and never seems to stop which is fortunate. I even work in some of my own research and update my files.

There really are some other things going on in my real life outside of genealogy which are extremely complicated also. I am sure I have forgotten a lot of things that need to be done but I guess I will handle those as they come along.

2 comments:

I am fascinated by your wide variety of topics. I am just beginning my own blog and guess what? I am writing about New Year's Resolutions. Well, the topic is more like setting goals using your patriarchal blessing. When life is overwhelmingly busy it is often difficult to prioritize. I've found that my blessing keeps me on track and I actually (after 30 years of practice) am reaching some of my goals. Come visit me. I live in Tucson. So where in Southern Arizona did you find yourself. Wouldn't it be a hoot if you were in my neck of the woods, Picture Rocks/Saguaro Nat'l Park West? I'd love to chat with you over the phone some day about just how you've done your blog... you see YOU are my HERO.